Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

            One minute, I was running – running as fast as I could in the year 2025 holding a box of my childhood treasures - and then I was surrounded by red grass and silver trees, all on fire. And the sound of screaming and hate as a thousand thousand ships battled around me.

“Yana!” His voice is so far away, I know that voice. I have known that voice in all its iterations in every life. Every life? No, that didn’t make sense. How could I have more than one life?

“Koschei!” I screamed, even though I didn’t know anyone named Koschei. “Koschei, please!”

            I was bleeding, I was maybe dying. I needed him. I’d been fine a second ago – before all this. But now I was bleeding and I felt a strange sensation as my hearts – heart, people only have one heart – went double time.

            A face I did but didn’t recognize came swimming into view. I knew this face. I trusted this face. It had been him and I together, resurrected to fight in the war. His hand shot out to grab mine, to drag me up, and I heard the comforting one-two-three-four beat of drums that I heard every time I touched him. It was him. It was really him.

“You can’t regenerate. Not yet. They’ll be on us in a second,” he said – pleaded. He only pleaded for me, I thought distantly through the pain. Only for me.

            It hurt, but it wasn’t so bad. I’d survived worse. Although that was with access to a med bay, which I definitely wouldn’t have before bleeding out. I knew he was right, though – if I regenerated I would be a beacon drawing them right to us.

“Okay,” I said (I lied).

“I’m getting you out of here,” he swore, and then I was on my feet again, leaning hard against him. I could feel the energy building up in me but tried to focus on pushing it down.

            I heard him swear and then I was scooped up in his arms as he ran.

“Koschei-“

“It’s not far,” he said, not bothering trying for calm. We were in a war zone, after all. Every line of his body was taut with palpable tension.

“I’m slowing you down,” I realized aloud, with a terrible sinking feeling in my stomach.

            He didn’t answer, just kept moving.

“Koschei… I’m slowing you down.” He had to make it. I knew he had to, he would exist later on. His path was in flux, but his timelines converged in one direction. He had to make it out alive. “You have to leave me.”

            There was only one path in which we both made it. One.

            I pushed at him weakly.

“Koschei, you have to live,” I implored him. “Leave me.”

“No.” It was said in half a snarl. “I won’t.”  

“You have to,” I told him sharply. “Time demands it.”

            He let out a short, hysteric laugh.

“I am the Master, Time can obey me.” The words were said with the reckless arrogance that I knew so well, but it was clear that the fear that had driven him to find me and run was still in the pilot seat. I wondered why – why he had given me the name Yana in the first place when I was newly resurrected, why he was bothering to save me at all when I knew what he was like.

            (But I had always been the exception, some traitorous part of my mind whispered. The same voice that whispered things like that when I imagined silly things like having known him my whole life.)

            I had always been sensitive to the path of time. They said they brought me back because when I gazed into the Untempered Schism I was inspired and that inspiration made me worthy, but I had no memory of that. Something in my resurrection must have gone wrong because unlike the Master – Koschei, some part of me insisted, like he did – I didn’t have any memory of my previous regenerations.

            The thought of regeneration, though, brought me back to the present. The energy was lurking in me, building. I was holding it back as best I could but the more blood I lost the worse it would get.

            One path. One chance. The Master had to live, but I – I wanted to live, too.

“Don’t leave me,” I pleaded out loud, burying my face in his neck. I was weak. He’d always brought that out in me. The weakness. I was the Marshall, I was a general, one of the most brilliant minds of the war. If Koschei was the perfect warrior, then I was the perfect strategist. I stood knee deep in the blood of our enemies and Koschei made me weak.

“Never,” he vowed, and when my arms tightened around his neck, his held me closer as if in answer.

            The blood loss started to win out. I knew if I didn’t get to a med bay, nothing would stop the regeneration energy from tearing out of me, rewriting me completely and most importantly acting as a great, flaming beacon to alert the Daleks to our location.

            One path. One chance.

            I closed my eyes and prayed.

“Yana, wake up.” It was a sharp command, said both aloud and in my mind. He’d always been good at that, at slipping into my head. Never going too far, but further than was appropriate for the kind of comrades we were supposed to be. If people like him and I could even truly be called that.

            I was in a med bay, I realized, blinking at the ceiling when I opened my eyes. The regeneration energy was at bay.

“I put you to sleep,” Koschei explained shortly. “There’s no time.”

            I took the hand he offered me then and sat up. From the way the wound on my shoulder (so close to one of my hearts) ached, he’d patched me up quickly rather than thoroughly. I tried to regain my senses. Still on Gallifrey. There were less of our people screaming now than there had been. We were… in a TARDIS. A War TARDIS, a type 94, judging by the standard look of the med bay and the distinct presence in my head. It didn’t feel right, though, as if-

“It’ll get us out,” Koschei snapped, sensing where my thoughts had gone. “I’ve repaired what I could.”

            Our hands were still joined. Even if I weren’t aware of the skin contact, even if he tried to close himself off from me completely, I would have known because I still heard his drums in my head. Our little secret, he said.

            They were screaming.

“What next?” I trusted him with my life. We’d had each other’s backs throughout the war, even if I fully didn’t understand why. The Master trusted no one. Koschei trusted me. He was the one who was going to get us out of this, because I had well and truly given up.

“The coordinates are set. We’ll go where no one will dare to follow, then…” his face shifted into a sneer. “Chameleon arch. No one will suspect us if we’re apes.”

            He hated humans. I didn’t have the time or luxury to form such an opinion, but… something in me protested at the way he spat the word out like it was dirty. Still, I nodded.

“I trust you.” I wasn’t sure if I’d ever actually said it to him before, but he deserved to know. “Anything you need from me?”

            I was a soldier, and while I was used to giving the orders, I was willing to follow his.

            There was a war raging around us, after all. The war that would end the universe.

“Bond with me.” The words were spoken so keenly that I didn’t understand them at first.

“Koschei-“ He couldn’t be serious.

“I have never been more serious in my life.” The words were flat. Dark. “Bond with me, Yana. You’ve been mine longer than you know.”

            I’d never thought about it before, if he knew me. Whoever I was before I was given the title the Marshall.

Because there had never been a Marshall before my resurrection – I’d searched every record I could find and there had only been one conclusion: my resurrection was wrong, or it had been tampered with. The only thing they couldn’t take from me was my true name, because it was ingrained in my soul and hidden there in the sacred ways of our people, secret and forbidden.

            A secret Koschei wanted me to impart to him now.

“You knew me.” A statement. A question. “Was I bonded? Married?”

            His eyes were so dark.

“Never bonded. Political marriage, no children. You died for good in your third regeneration and I killed your husband six times for it before it stuck. It was a mistake leaving you to him. We – I should have killed him when he dared offer for your hand.”

            I didn’t question the ‘we.’ Or the… implications of dying so young before the war.

“Are my parents alive?” To consent, I didn’t add. I was… considering this, I realized suddenly. Considering marriage – bonding - as my people were slaughtered. A thought struck me. “Do I have any family left?”

            Were there people I had once loved out there, dying as we spoke?

“No. Your mother died while you were at the Academy and I killed your father when I was done with your husband.” There was barely contained rage behind those words – though nothing like what I felt from him when he mentioned this husband. “I assure you, he deserved it.”

            I was as alone in the world, then, as I thought. Though – not alone. Hadn’t Koschei been there from the very beginning? It was hard to a remember a time since my resurrection that I’d been without him.

            I couldn’t imagine being without him. The very thought made my hearts twist in a feeling my stunted being couldn’t quite parse.

“I might never be the person you knew again,” I told him warily. “The resurrection took… everything. I might always be the Marshall.”

“It doesn’t matter. You’re more you than you realize and you’re mine. And I won’t let you go again.” His hand slipped out of mine, taking his drums away for a brief moment before he was holding my face in both his hands his mind brushing insistently against my own as the drums pounded between us. “Bond with me, Yana.”

            My feelings for him, that trust I couldn’t feel for anyone else, were forged in war and bloodshed. I might live to regret this. I might never remember it, living out the rest of my days as a human with no memories.

            But if I didn’t do this, I would never forgive myself either.

“Yes.”

            There was no ceremony. No handfasting and parents to consent and gladly give, just the oldest, most sacred exchange. His mind to mine, the drums echoing through us both, and his mouth to my ear, and mine to his, exchanging names. The only piece of myself I’d been allowed to keep when they took everything else away from me.

            When he kissed me, it was with the entirety of his being bound to mine and tear tracks streaming down my face because as possessive and twisted as his love might be, it was desperate and all-consuming.

            Then his hand came down on the last button and we were hurtling through the vortex in our desperate bid to live, pushing the damaged, stolen TARDIS further than any TARDIS had ever been pushed before. And both of us could feel it – it was too late to stop the journey but it was tearing the already damaged ship apart.

“Chameleon arch,” Koschei shouted, the drums a maddening crescendo shared between us amidst the waling of alarm sirens. “Now!”

“You first,” I insisted. We were narrowing down the paths now, only a few were left in which we didn’t survive. “It has to be you.”

            Our nascent bond was flooded with a thought that took no name but he nodded sharply.

            It took him seconds to program it.

            His agony at undergoing the change was only mine for a brief moment – and then he was gone from my head, maybe forever. When I pulled him from the chameleon arch, he was just an unconscious little human boy bundled up by the TARDIS with a pocket watch tucked into his blanket.

            The ship was screaming now, shaking and starting to rip apart, but it still-

            Two paths left. Koschei – the Master – would survive.

            I pulled the chameleon arch over my head as the interior dimension of the TARDIS started to give way to the vortex and screamed as the pain went tearing through me. An entire wall was ripped away, making the ship screech as I was thrown across the room into the matrix.

            The last thing I saw was the heart of the TARDIS as I went barreling into it.

            The light washed over me like a gentle thing, the roaring vortex, and the uncanny time sensitivity I had always felt narrowed the paths down to one. The muted song of a TARDIS grown for battle was the last thing I heard before I knew no more.

One minute, I was running – running as fast as I could in the year 2025 holding a box of my childhood treasures and remembering none of that – and then I found myself falling through golden light, lost at the end of the universe.

“This new regeneration, it’s kind of cheeky,” a familiar voice observed as the light faded and I was left looking at a man – an impossible man – in a brown suit with his back towards me, face pressed into a little window as he opened his mouth to reply.

            That – it couldn’t be the Doctor.

            The weight of the box in my hands – stupid little plastic treasures I’d kept from my childhood, gifts from my dad when I’d first watched Doctor Who as a kid – seemed to double, as though those shoddy replicas of my favorite props and a few homemade things rattled around like plastic had suddenly become metal and leather.

            My heart – singular because Doctor Who is a fucking tv show no matter what strange inception-y dreams I’d had when this one started might suggest – was drumming in my chest.

            I made the mistake of stumbling back before I booked it – and that made him turn around, his brown eyes meeting my blue ones for a single moment.

            I clutched my box harder to my chest and turned on my heels and ran for all I was worth, uncaring of whatever outburst I was leaving behind me.

            (He looked like he’d seen a ghost and not in a good way.)

“Have to get the fuck out of here,” I spat out as I ran, wondering why he looked at me like I was something bad, a nightmare come to life. “Have to wake up.”

            My head was pounding. I took whatever random turns in this crazy place that my gut commanded me to because it had never steered me wrong. I had always been lucky like that. But wasn’t it strange, dreaming of the end of the world – of Utopia – and having the Doctor look at me like I was some sort of monster? Dreaming of these corridors that were taking way too long to navigate despite my innate knack for always getting where I needed to be?

            Why wasn’t the dream fast-forwarding past this easily skipped content?

            Why were my calves burning as I sprinted, my breath coming out in desperate, greedy gasps of air as I ran, my heart thundering in distress at the strain I’d been putting on it since I’d started running and hardly stopped?

“It’s stuck. It’s old, it’s not meant to be.” An aged voice protested. “Does it matter?”

            Open the box. You have to open the box.

            I could feel a voice calling out to me but I ignored it as I stumbled into the lab.

“No, it’s nothing-“ Martha started, then stared at me with wide eyes.

            There was nothing in her eyes to suggest she knew me, only panic as the elderly man beside her held out a fob watch to her. She didn’t even seem to realize that I was wearing very obvious Earth clothing from her era.

            She looked at me before looking back to Professor Yana, clearly freaking out – Yana, the name was so familiar and not just because of the episode….

            Open the box. Show him the watch.

            Harder to ignore. Almost impossible. I felt the pull so strongly my hand moved against my will, without my knowledge.

“Chan, who are you, tho?” The vaguely insectoid or crustacean alien female that didn’t know what was going on asked, but I didn’t answer.

            Professor Yana stood across the room, clutching his watch close as he took in my face with a look of recognition.

“It’s you,” he breathed, his grip on his watch so tight that his knuckles looked as though they had lost all blood. “You’re-“

            I dug through the box without thinking, heart pounding.

            My hand slipped under the lid and I was surprised to find my fingers brushing against smooth metal, which surprised me, as though the toy I’d had for well over a decade had somehow turned to pure silver. The replica of the Master’s watch I’d played pretend with before, that I’d taken to school like I was so cool and edgy for it when I was in high school.

            Trust him. You must get away from the Doctor.

            The voice was full of fear. It was so, so convincing.

            I pulled out the watch and approached him carefully, as one would a wild beast.

            The voice wanted me to show him the watch, so I would show it to him. The Doctor had looked at me like I was a fucking ghost dalek thing? Fine, I’ll listen to the voice in the box and hand over the toy. Maybe it was a cure for the drums or something. There couldn’t be two watches that said ‘the Master’ on them in Gallifreyan. It would probably create some kind of paradox. Given that it was a woman’s voice I heard and the fact that it literally had the Master’s name on it, according to the prop department that made it, I wondered if it was Missy in there.

“I’ve waited so long for you,” Yana breathed, taking a step towards me. “Your face, imprinted in my mind since I was a boy.”

            Martha stared at the watch in my hand in horror as I dangled it in the air, my gaze on Yana’s unblinking. And then she took off running.

            …The never-ending drumbeat. Open me, you human fool. Open the light and summon me and receive my majesty.

            Give him the watch, Marya Oakden. You can trust him.

            How, I wanted to ask as both voices slammed into me at once, one demanding and cruel, the other pleading. How could I trust-

            Yana looked down at his watch and slowly moved to open it.

“Did it look like they could see the watches, Martha?” The Doctor asked with urgency as he tried to focus on getting the ship to Utopia safely into the air.

“See them? Doctor, she pulled it out of a box and handed it to him!” Martha felt like she should be excited but the Doctor’s caution filled her with dread. “It was like she knew what it was from the start, like the perception filter didn’t affect her at all.”

            The Doctor was quiet, thoughts racing. He worked faster.

            Tears streamed down my face as the Master dragged me into the TARDIS with surprising strength given that Chantho had still shot him. I hadn’t been able to save her. I hadn’t been able to do anything.

            I was just a useless waste of space sitting on the TARDIS floor, staring at my wrist that ached from how he had grabbed me.

            It hurt. How could it hurt, if this was a dream?

            (The Doctor was screaming outside the TARDIS doors.)

            The Master screamed too as he regenerated. Then he laughed.

“Now then, Doctor!” He cried out in triumph, dancing around the console like a maniac. “Oh, new voice. Hello. Hello. Hello!”

            The watch that had started out this morning as a plastic toy murmured words of reassurance from where it was newly stashed in the Master’s pocket but they didn’t get into my head the same way now that I wasn’t holding it. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him.

“Anyway, why don’t we stop and have a nice little chat where I tell you all my plans and you can work out a way to stop me?” He asked sarcastically. “I don’t think!”

            The Doctor responded but I couldn’t quite make out the words with my human hearing. The Master clearly could, though, because he listened like he was savoring whatever words were said before he callously demanded, “Use my name.”

            Trust him. He’ll keep you safe. The only remaining watch crooned to me. Trust the Master.

            I didn’t, though, how could I? I was a stupid human and the watch was trying to trick me. Now that it wasn’t as close it couldn’t impress its will on me like it had when I handed it over. But it maintained its claim that somehow I was better off with the Master.

            I was stuck in the TARDIS with him. I was going to die.

“End of the universe.” The Master called out mockingly. “Have fun. Bye-bye!”

            I watched him slam a button on the console and then heard the tell-tale sound of the TARDIS dematerializing.

            The Master’s manic eyes turned to me.

“Tell me your name.” It was a command. I was in the deep end and I couldn’t swim.

“Marya,” I tried to say neatly, to not make him angry. “Marya Oakden.”

            He approached so quickly that I didn’t even notice him slipping the fob watch out of his pocket until he was holding it out in front of him as he towered over me.

“Marya Oakden,” he repeated, letting loose a little hysterical laugh. “I gave you life, Marya Oakden. Care to tell me how you ended up at the end of the universe in twenty-first century earth clothes?”

            I clutched my box closer to myself. If the watch I’d had inside it was real, he couldn’t take anything else out of the box. It would be too dangerous. I had a replica of Jack’s vortex manipulator in there. Regardless of what the watch wanted me to do, it was imperative that the Doctor locking the coordinates of the TARDIS be enough to trap him in Martha’s time so that the Master’s plan could be stopped. Maybe… Maybe I would give him the Vortex Manipulator so that he could escape after preferably not being shot by his wife. That way the Doctor wouldn’t be forced to watch over his funeral pyre.

“I’m – I’m from the year 2025. Something happened to me… glowing golden light, and then I ended up on your base.”

            This seemed to perturb him a little, but he set it aside.

“Do you have a nickname, Marya Oakden?” He asked curiously, his eyes trained on me. “Something you prefer to be called?”

            I hesitated. Not too long, because I knew I had to snap out of it and answer before he lost patience. But – why did he want to know that?

“My friends call me Yana,” I admitted, keeping careful stock of him and how his face changed.

            His smile widened and stretched until he looked almost deranged.

“We’ll keep that our little secret then,” he told me coyly. “No telling the Doctor if he catches up. And no letting anyone else call you that, either.”

            I nodded. What else could I do?

            I watched him close his eyes as he pressed the watch to his cheek with a shudder of pleasure that should have been scary or disturbing to see…

            And then the TARDIS was landing, we were - back in 2006, I assumed – and the Master? He had work to do.

            I don’t know what I expected to happen to me, exactly. I was thinking I’d get shunted out of the TARDIS and left to make my way through the vortex like Jack did, but we landed safely enough and before long the Master was tinkering away at something with spare parts he’d scrounged up or ripped out of things.

            He didn’t speak to me so I tried not to take up too much room as he just focused on his work. Eighteen months. That’s how long I would have to survive him just until the Doctor returned. Maybe if I could escape somehow, I considered, or got him to let me go… I might be able to meet up with the Doctor at one of his previous adventures. But then… he looked at me like I was a monster. He must have recognized me from somewhere. What if I did manage to get away from the Master and then fucked up one of his adventures and he got rid of me?

“You don’t ask many questions,” the Master drawled suddenly, breaking me from my thoughts.

            It was just me cradling my box of secrets sitting on the floor of the console room.

“I… don’t want to interrupt.” I paused, recognizing the device coming together in his hands. “Is that a laser screwdriver?”

            He blinked, but smiled.

“Yes. No point in going out those doors unarmed. We have a lot to do and that will be easier with tools at hand.” He studied me for a moment, a little quirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Even as an ape you’re leagues more intelligent than the rest.”

            His eyes darkened with some sick interest.

“Do you hear her? The voice from the watch?” He asked, the words heavy and burdensome in the air. There was no point in lying to him.

“Even now,” I admitted, because I did. She was whispering to me from his pocket, soothing me like some child. Not like a mother, but like someone else who had also been a scared child. I didn’t trust her because she was pushing me to stay with the Master, but other than that she seemed to want to keep me calm, which was… worrying.

            Why would a Time Lord – Lady – that was clearly helping the Master and wanting me to stay away from the Doctor want me to stay calm?

            Unless she blamed the Doctor for the Time War? The Master had been brought back to fight in it, so maybe watch lady was just taking the Master’s side kind of like taking a stand for their people. Maybe she was just misguided?

“She’s trying very hard to comfort you,” the Master observed. “Why is that?”

            I stiffened. Couldn’t help it. What the fuck was I supposed to say? I couldn’t let him know about the show. What could I say that wouldn’t make him force that out of me?

“You’re afraid.” There was anger in his tone. “You shouldn’t be. Has the Doctor already poisoned you against me?”

            I shook my head wildly as he approached.

“No. I’m – I’m from the year 2025. I’ve never met the Doctor before today and we didn’t talk at all. I just… don’t know how I got here.” That was true enough. My intuition wasn’t screaming danger at me and I trusted it, so I tried to slump my shoulders and appear less anxious. “The watch told me to trust you. It keeps telling me to trust you, that I’m… safe with you.”

“Of course you are,” the Master dismissed. “I saved you. Me. Not the Doctor. Me. If it wasn’t for my intervention you would be dead and gone.”

            I had never met him in my life. But then – a past or future regeneration, maybe? I tried to think of them and which one I might have met because it sounded like… well, I’d been running, hadn’t I? Maybe the Master was the one who brought me to this universe?

“Right then,” he announced with cheer that somehow still felt malevolent when he slid the last panel of his new laser screwdriver closed. “This is done. Time to raid the TARDIS for everything else!”

            Being in the TARDIS was, of course, every Doctor Who fan’s ultimate dream. Being accessory to raiding the TARDIS not only without the Doctor’s permission or presence but with the Master leading the way, who was going to turn it into a Paradox Machine was… upsetting.

            Extremely upsetting.

            I followed him quietly because he’d impatiently held his hand out for mine before dragging me along, not letting go. He was muttering to himself but all I could think of was how wrong this was. In the TARDIS, planning to steal from her. I wanted no part of it. I wanted-

            Was this why the Doctor looked at me like I was a monster, I wondered? Did he somehow know before I did that I was going to invade his TARDIS with the Master?

            We walked with purpose down random hallways until even I was able to cotton on that the TARDIS was being difficult. She was the Doctor’s, after all. But the Master was a Time Lord and very proficient at the hypnotism/telepathy stuff who was definitely aware from the start because right then he snarled with impatience and let go of my hand to – do some Time Lord mind thing to bludgeon the poor old girl’s will until the hallway we were in shifted into presumably the one he wanted in the first place.

            I watched how the lights flickered and dimmed and tears sprang to my eyes.

            I thought for one second I felt something brush against my mind – but that couldn’t have been right.

“Wardrobe!” The Master exclaimed with satisfaction, throwing open a door. “We’ll be needing disguises, of course…”

            We? I thought, stomach churning with a sharp spike of anxiety as I followed him in.

            The Wardrobe was huge and (because the TARDIS was still fighting him) an absolute mess. How we were supposed to find anything here, I didn’t know. The Master, though, strode over to some kind of touch console and soon racks of clothing were being shifted away until there was a much narrower selection.

            Suits and coats and shoes and stuff, all within the realm of what a well-off, respectable person would wear in 2006 as far as I knew. There were dresses too, as far off from the suits where the Master was already digging around as possible.

            I swallowed. I wasn’t too out of period. I was wearing a loose cropped black star wars t-shirt with dark denim high-waisted shorts and my favorite bookish tights that I’d found online that featured the mountain and stars design from ACOTAR. I’d probably be fine if I went out like this. I knew people in the UK didn’t typically dress as freely or loudly as Americans (at least they didn’t when I went to Scotland to visit family), but I shouldn’t stick out like crazy. Just maybe look a little alt, which wouldn’t exactly-

“Pick a dress, Yana. A red one.” The Master instructed impatiently, frowning at me suddenly. “And a coat. You’ll need one, being… human. It’ll be too cold for you outside.”

            I wondered how he knew that but didn’t dare ask. He clearly knew when and where we were, maybe because he had been able to read the coordinates the Doctor locked the TARDIS into. I forced myself not to hesitate and started looking through the pro-offered tea dresses. They were all fancier than what I usually wore, and older looking too which wasn’t really me. I tended to dress young for my age anyway, so tea dresses weren’t…

            I finally pulled one out that looked fine. It was a bit 50s, but I sort of liked a vintage look anyway and 2006 fashion wasn’t it from what I remembered of it. This would do. Now… a coat.

             One option presented itself. Just one. A classic black car coat, vintage fitted that made me think of Jack’s coat but clearly modern with a stylish heavy zipper going down the front. The material was something like wool but softer. Probably alien. I would have said it was the most beautiful coat I’d ever seen, but I had seen it before.

            It was a perfect replica of the coat my Nannie had bought me for my birthday on our last visit to Scotland together. Classy, elegant. When I’d tried it on she’d told me I looked beautiful.

“Thank you,” I murmured as quietly as I could to the TARDIS, hesitating for a moment. “And I’m sorry.”

            Sorry wasn’t enough for what was coming, but I didn’t dare say anything else.

            I felt something brush against my mind vaguely – like seafoam touching your toes while you walk on the beach but you don’t get to feel the water itself – and then a door swung open to my right. It was a small room with a huge mirror and a dressing table and little implements that were all delightfully Rococo in style, so girly and soft and elegant that it felt like the TARDIS had picked it out of my brain. I’d always loved 18^th century style things…

“I’ll just get changed now,” I announced as carefully as I could, afraid of aggroing the Master as he threw suits that all looked the same to me onto the floor. Seemed like he was pretty picky now that he was freshly regenerated, sort of like the Doctor. I tried not to think too hard on that, instead grabbing the first pair of black heels that look my size and easy to walk in from the pairs provided by the TARDIS.

            The Master glanced over at what I was holding. A red dress as instructed. He smiled all teeth when he looked at it. Scanned the coat, the box I was clutching. His eyes narrowed.

“What’s in that box?” He asked, eyes sharp. I could practically feel his thoughts churning. The watch had been in there, after all.

            I told the truth. Well, as much of it as I dared.

“I was cleaning out my grandparent’s house and… I was taking some things home with me. Your watch was in it, along with some toys from my childhood.” I tried really hard not to think about the odds that they weren’t toys anymore. “My dad died when I was a kid and I guess my grandparents just ended up holding onto his - my - stuff. I was still holding onto the box when I ended up at the end of the universe and… I guess I can’t bear to let go.”

            The corner of his mouth twitched in displeasure.

“You’re right. It is my watch,” he told me, hand drifting over the pocket where the watch I had given him resided. “Get dressed. And get rid of that box. You won’t be needing it any longer.”

            I nodded but my throat was thick. Maybe the TARDIS would help me stash the box where the Master would never find it? But then… how would I survive if I escaped him without the vortex manipulator or psychic paper? I’d – I’d have to figure something out.

            I changed quickly once the door was securely shut behind me. It wouldn’t stop him from getting in, not that I expected him to bother, but it made me feel a lot better knowing it was locked while I was vulnerable. I pulled on the jacket for good measure, finding it warm and comforting and so, so soft.

            I looked at the box I’d placed on the dressing table and wondered if I could salvage anything from it and just… shove it in my pockets or something. To preserve the memories. I could hide the tech if it really had become real, and maybe keep whatever wasn’t.

            My hands slid into my pockets to check the size and – and I froze.

            They were bigger on the inside. The TARDIS – she gave me a coat that was a replica of my favorite coat with pockets that were bigger on the inside.

“Sexy…? Do I… in the future-“ I can’t bring myself to say it. I hope since she can get in my head anyway she knows what I’m asking, even though I’m afraid of the answer. But no – that can’t be. I’m helping the Master. Sort of. And the Doctor – the way he looked at me. It was not a look of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey you’re a past companion who died or got hurt look of sadness. He looked at me like I was a cyberman or a dalek.

            There was no way.

            The TARDIS could get in my head and probably knew what I was thinking, though. And it was only natural she would try to help the Doctor by keeping the vortex manipulator away from the Master. Maybe the coat… was a little nudge to let me know that hiding the contents of the box was doing the right thing.

            I take my hands out of the pockets I couldn’t find an end to and open the box.

            Inside were the toys of my childhood. Well, the Eleventh Doctor’s sonic screwdriver was a later addition to the box; I’d bought it myself when I was older, thoroughly charmed by the fact that it worked as a real screwdriver, but I digress. The ‘psychic paper’ my dad had made for me out of an old passport sleeve looked like new leather. The replica of Jack’s vortex manipulator was metal and leather where it had been scuffed cheap plastic. There was even a bag of jelly babies that had looked old and worn and definitely expired in 2025 and had somehow magically been restored to newness. I wondered if they were safe to eat.

            There were some old photos too. The last pieces of home I will ever see again.

            Tears spring to my eyes as I struggle to think of how I’m supposed to survive the next eighteen months, even less the Year That Never Was.

“Yana! We have work to do!” The Master shouts from the other side of the door. “Hurry up.”

            I wipe the tears away furiously.

“Sorry, I was struggling with the dress zipper, but I’ve got it now,” I lie as I quietly start shoving the remainder of my childhood into my pockets. “Should I put on makeup before we go? To match the disguise?”

            I don’t want to put on makeup, but I’ll do it if it gives me a minute to breathe.

“Just come out,” the Master snaps back, impatience building in his voice.

            I carefully close the box and throw it in a wastebin so that he hopefully won’t be able to tell that I took all the stuff inside. Then, I zipped my coat over my dress and prepared to face the… well, drums.

“Perfect,” the Master breathed when he saw me. A sly smile spread over his face. “You look like a politician’s wife.”

            If I survived this, I realized with numbing despair, it was going to be a long eighteen months. And that would only be the beginning.

Chapter Text

            The Master… didn’t kill me. Days passed. He made me accompany him everywhere, in all manner of red and orange dresses. He sure liked me in warm colors despite my light ginger hair, I thought irreverently as I chose yet another red (scarlet, some distant part of my mind supplied) option for the day – a classy looking wrap dress. We stayed on the TARDIS the first few nights while the Master started quickly establishing his Harold Saxon persona, but soon enough we were in an upper-class part of London in a fancy flat.

            He didn’t let me out of his sight, ever. Not in the flat, not on the streets of London, not when he was schmoozing, never. There were no chances of escape, he was just constantly everywhere. It was unnerving. It was worse knowing that, even when I did fall asleep despite my anxiety and naturally shitty sleep schedule, he was lurking in the living room up to no good, with only my bedroom door between us.

            He introduced me as his partner to everyone we spoke to, probably because his hand usually held mine in a vice like grip when we were out. He made affectionate but respectful gestures in front of other people – like kissing my hand while my fingers were interlaced with his – but otherwise left me to my own devices at home.

            We ate meals together when he did eat. He surprised (and terrified) me by keeping the flat supplied with rhubarb. Pies and tarts. I didn’t know how he knew I loved rhubarb. I worried that he’d gotten into my head somehow, but he showed no sign, no reaction, to the fact that he was a fictional character where I came from, so I eventually relaxed.

            I tried my best to avoid angering him, but that seemed to anger him too.

            He watched me, mostly, occasionally bringing out the watch (which he kept on him at all times) while he stared thoughtfully. He looked at me like I was a puzzle to be figured out and I blindly tried to stay on his good side, occasionally failing upwards and accidentally doing something that pleased him for some reason.

            The rhubarb, for instance. When I’d been unable to disguise how much I enjoyed the frankly obscenely large slice of pie I’d served myself in place of actual dinner he’d looked satisfied, like I had done something right.

            We didn’t talk much outside of that. He was busy working on the satellite schematics for the Archangel Network. It was strange. He provided everything I might need with uncanny accuracy, though he made sure my wardrobe was filled with appropriate clothing for ‘Harold Saxon’s’ partner and didn’t give me much by way of comfortable options.

            I made it through three weeks of alternating silence in the apartment and playing a loving couple in public as his obedient little human before I just couldn’t deal with it anymore.

“I’m going out,” I announced, neatly attired with my light ginger hair pulled up in a bun. My heart was pounding dramatically in my chest at the thought of pulling a stunt like this but I had no choice. “I should be back in an hour or so.”

            I’d waited to say it until I was close to the door, swinging my purse over my shoulder – which held the bank card the Master had provided me to ‘amuse’ myself with. Not that I had ever gotten to go to a shop without him before but whatever.

“Excuse me?” The Master demanded, shooting up from where he was working.

            He stalked over like a predator, eyes dark and unforgiving.

            I tried to hold my ground.

“There’s something I need from the store,” I tried to explain evenly. “I’m not trying to run away. I’ll be right back.”

            An eerie calm settled over his features.

“Why would you run away?” He asked, voice smooth as silk. “Have I not provided for your every need? You’re safe here. You don’t need to go out.”

            Fuck, I thought, taking in the way his hand strayed to the pocket that held the watch. I could hear her whispering to him. I’d caught him on a… less stable day. He’d seemed fine, but when he got all calm like that it was never good.

“You’ve been very good to me,” I tried to appease carefully. “I just need to buy something. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. I didn’t want to interrupt your work.”

            I technically hadn’t asked, but I was hoping that given that he was being a bit weird about the watch today he wouldn’t focus on that.

“Whatever you need can be delivered,” he dismissed. He seemed less angry, though, so I took that as a win. Unfortunately, I needed what I needed right now, not in the morning when a delivery would arrive.

“It can’t wait until tomorrow,” I admitted, my mouth pressed into a thin line. “It’s really important. I need it now.”

            The corner of his mouth pulled down in a frown. I was shocked he hadn’t threatened my life or anything for daring to argue with him, but then he generally seemed content to let me be otherwise.

“If it’s so important, we’ll go together.” He was practically daring me to argue.  

            My face flushed.

“You – you can’t come. I’m not hiding anything like, important from you, it’s just a human need thing.” I couldn’t look at him. “Just a really quick trip. Or – if you have to come, just wait for me at the entrance.”

“You’re meeting someone,” he accused, the false calm of his expression shattering like glass. “The Doctor contacted you somehow.”

            He was obsessed with this idea that the Doctor was going to… I don’t know, turn me against him, use me as a spy. For what info? The Master didn’t really share his plan with me, he just kind of did everything himself and had me come along to make him seem more human. If he thought that I was in contact with the Doctor I would be in danger, definitely. I needed-

“I need tampons!” I blurted out in frustration. “I am a human woman and I’ve been with you for three weeks already. I’m starting my period and you haven’t let me breathe even for a second to buy the supplies I need to deal with it. I need tampons, pads, and painkillers. And honestly? I wouldn’t mind a heated blanket or something; my cramps are miserable.”

            He stared at me in utter bewilderment.

            So much so that for one wild, horrible moment, I thought I might have to explain what a period was. A flash of myself mapping out the human female reproductive system for him like a mom giving her kid the birds and the bees talk went through my mind and it was so stupid I almost made the mistake of laughing at it. Which would have been disastrous of course because no one laughs at the Master and lives. 

“We’ll go together.” His gaze, which had been burning into mine at the mere thought that I might have the opportunity to betray him, averted.

            I supposed the logic was that now that he knew what I needed there was no point in me trying to hide it, which I agreed with despite myself, and…

            That was how I ended up in the feminine hygiene aisle of Boots with a psychopathic Time Lord, staring at the options before me in utter mortification as he pretended this wasn’t completely embarrassing.

            I didn’t recognize any of these products. Why would I? I hadn’t even had my period yet in 2006 (didn’t get it until I was twelve) and all of these products were different from the ones for sale in the US in 2025. I recognized a brand I used normally, but the actual descriptions were different. Damn. Also the packages came with less than I was used to.

“Any chance you could do your hypnosis thing so no one remembers how much I’m stocking up?” I asked in a rush before I could stop myself, my fear of going up to the counter with an armful of tampons and pads overriding my fear of the Master for a second. “I don’t want to have to come back.”

“Acceptable,” the Master said with a short nod, amusement rolling off of him in waves. I tried not to think about how handsome he looked when he smiled like that. It was probably just the charisma of the Harold Saxon act, I told myself.

            I grabbed enough stuff to hopefully last through my next cycle too and tried to carry it to the counter with dignity. True to his word, the Master absolutely hypnotized the employee that passed us coming out of a different aisle, a customer, and the cashier that checked us out so that none of them would remember seeing us.

            By the time we walked out of the store, the Master holding on to my shopping bags in one hand (I did get a small heating pad and all!) with his other grasping mine, I couldn’t help the breathless laugh that escaped me.

            It was snowing, so cold that my breath came out in little puffs that I could see (although the Master’s didn’t, probably a Time Lord thing). I looked up at him with a grin I couldn’t help and – was surprised by the – not soft, but indulgent – expression on his face.

            Trust him. The watch insisted from his pocket.

            I broke eye contact first.

            We didn’t speak the entirety of the way back. Just his hand gripping mine whenever appropriate in the company of others. It was so quiet that I thought I had imagined the look on his face. When we walked into the flat, though, he didn’t immediately let go of my hand.

“Master…?” I questioned when an awkward few seconds had passed and I didn’t know what to do anymore.

“Koschei,” he demanded shortly, his hand gripping mine tightly. “At home, Koschei.”

“Okay…” I agreed slowly, unsurely. “Koschei.”

            He let go, expression returning to its usual bored, vaguely manic default.

            I took the bag of period products with me and tried not to think about it too hard.

            That marked a new beginning for the Master and I. It was… more relaxed at home, at least. The Master did start taking me on trips back to the end of the world to deal with the Toclafane, but I just stayed shut in the TARDIS until he was done with whatever he was doing. I never saw anything, didn’t leave the TARDIS when we were there, and tried to think of the only time I could be separate from him as a good thing. I supposed he didn’t mind leaving me alone since the world outside was miserable and dangerous as fuck and I couldn’t drive the TARDIS to escape anyway.

            The rest of the time, when I was stuck under his surveillance, was much better.

Sure, sometimes he would lose his temper and break something because of a setback with the satellites or his other project, the Valiant, insulting ‘stupid apes’ for not following his ‘simple instructions,’ but most of the time it was weirdly domestic. The watch was pleased as I settled in and stopped being so afraid of him (which I knew was dangerous, but he clearly wanted me for something, so I was safe enough for now, I figured). We went to dinner with a bunch of lame politicians, he hypnotized a bunch of people, started his political career, and… I went along as an accessory.

            Marya Oakden started to appear in the newspapers and stuff. I went to his book signings with him, even ended up on a talk show as he started getting bigger. My clothes and fashion choices became the subject of small columns on blogs and such. It was nerve-wracking.

            He threw me a ring box one day and then I was his ‘fiancée.’ It was a very nice, very expensive ring, to be fair. There were tabloid articles about that too, after we’d made our first appearance with me wearing it. But I was too anxious to think about it. What about Lucy? Lucy Saxon was supposed to be his wife, not… me. She had a big role to play in the timeline, after all.

            I didn’t mention her name, but I did bring up the topic as casually as I could when he first gave it to me. When he seemed calm, just sitting on the couch typing away at the laptop he was often stuck to while I did human things.

“Shouldn’t you look for a fiancée that will help sell your cover story a little better?” I asked him, eyeing the open ring box as though it might bite me. “I don’t have any living family around, and certainly not any that could help you with British politics.”

“I’ll just hypnotize your family in America into believing you’re older,” he shrugged with a callous wave of his hand. My heart lurched.

“I was adopted,” I told him truthfully. Also because I didn’t want him hunting down my alternate family if they existed here. “My mom wouldn’t have even been an adult when I was born, and… my dad died a few months ago this year. You should find someone else for your cover.”

            I… had my own concerns, plot aside, about being the Master’s fiancée. Namely, did it mean I was going to actually marry him? We still had a good fifteen months to go, more than enough time to organize a wedding and I, uh, I wasn’t exactly about marriage at this point in my life.

            Especially not to a psychotic Time Lord who I was planning to keep alive out of sympathy for the Doctor and a growing fondness I was sure was just worsening Stockholm Syndrome.

“Once these useless apes have my satellites up I’ll make sure no one questions the story I’ll create for you,” he dismissed. “You can plan the wedding to your taste, I’ll have someone make the arrangements for you.”

            I stared at him in both stupefaction and horror.

“We – we’re actually getting married?” I stumbled over, well, all the words, really, but especially the last one. “You and I? Like, in a church? Legally?”

            I had never been the marrying type. Or the committed relationship type. In fact I avoided such things like the plague. The idea of walking down the aisle and being legally married to Harold Saxon when I would probably end up left behind in the early 2000s was… crazy. The fact that I would technically be married to him if the wedding went through for the rest of my life if the wedding went through and he lived was… even weirder. If I remarried after he was declared dead but he was out there somewhere would it technically be bigamy?

“What? Don’t want to marry me?” He asked mockingly, but there was a sharp consideration in his gaze that made me uncomfortable. “Do you think an ape marriage ceremony matters in the grand scheme of things?”

            I – I tried not to make a face.

“Well, not to you, but when you go off and take over the universe or whatever I’m going to be stuck here in the twenty-first century reliving nearly two decades of pop culture as I get older with a marriage certificate somewhere that says I’m Harold Saxon’s wife,” I responded quickly, trying not to let show how my heart had picked up nervously. “And if you’re going to piss off the whole of humanity the way I’m thinking you will, being your wife is going to get me left in prison or something.”

            He laughed, but it was manic, almost hysteric.

“You think I’m going to leave you behind? On the planet of the apes?” He was up off the couch and coming towards me so quickly that I stumbled back out of reflex. “You’re mine, Yana. You’re never getting away from me. And soon you’ll see why.”

            Those words were chilling. In the days after that confrontation – because he had let me go after that, pacing the apartment with the watch in his hand in a terrible mood for the next few days, though he acted normally as Harold Saxon. He was laser focused on the satellites and barely spoke to me. On the fifth day, we went out as normal and to my horror I ended up sat in front of a wedding planner as she gushed over my expensive ass looking ring while the Master affectionately held my other hand visibly on the table, thumb stroking over my knuckles.

            I barely managed to control my expression when he leaned over and pressed a demonstrative kiss to my cheek, my face flushing even as my heart raced in… some kind of strong mix of emotions I couldn’t quite parse.

            We stayed there for an hour as the wedding planner glazed our picture perfect relationship and tittered at how accommodating ‘Harry’ was when he insisted that it be my dream wedding featuring whatever I’d like. I… didn’t know what I would like. I had never thought of a wedding before. Honestly I would rather have it at Disneyland, but that probably wouldn’t work for the Master’s political gain.

“Wedding planning is exhausting,” I grumbled when we were back at home and I could be myself rather than the demure politician’s… well, wife that I usually had to play the part of. “I don’t really care about the details, anyway, weddings aren’t exactly my thing. All I want for sure is to pick my own dress and have ‘Loch Lomond’ as the last song of the night.”

            The Master hummed, his fingers tapping out the drums against the watch in his pocket. She had been quiet recently, I wasn’t sure why. Quiet for me, anyway – for all I knew she was whispering to him all the time.

“Why ‘Loch Lomond’?” He asked with an idle curiosity, glancing over at me. “You’re American.”

            I shrugged a little.

“Technically, yes. But I was born in Scotland and my adopted dad and grandparents were Scottish. I used to spend all my holidays there growing up. Even had the accent as a kid, but enough teasing in elementary school got me to drop it pretty quickly.” It was weird talking to the Master about my life. “If I’m going to get married at all, I’d like to add a little bit of my culture to it, you know? I went to my cousin’s wedding a couple of years ago and… I guess I just loved the tradition of ending the night with that song.”

            He took that information in with a look on his face that I couldn’t make heads or tails of. Like he found it abhorrent that I had human traditions but also like I’d struck some kind of cord.

“…How do you feel about handfasting?” He asked, studying me.

            I blinked.

“I… I always wanted to have handfasting at my wedding if I ever got married,” I admitted, and quickly moved to correct any wrong assumptions he might make. “Not that I ever planned on getting married. And I still disagree that we should get married. A marriage certificate and exchanging vows might not mean anything to you but it’s sort of a big deal to humans.”

            He made that face at my answer – the one where he smiled just a little and looked distinctly pleased.

“We’ll have handfasting at the wedding, then,” he said decisively. “I’ll handle the design of the cord.”

            It was the most interest he’d shown in the wedding at all. I wondered why he even brought handfasting up, it wasn’t like it would be a good look for his political aspirations where a normal Church of England wedding would be the preference. I didn’t think it was because it was a Gallifreyan thing too, because why would he care to include any of his culture in a human wedding that was just for show?

            I never got an answer.

            Instead, I became inundated with wedding nonsense. Not just the planning, but since the Master could just laser screwdriver money into his account (though he was carefully laser screwdriving money into the accounts of people who were then hypnotized into giving it to him through various legal and morally acceptable channels), the information that ended up leaking about it made it a huge deal in every tabloid and gossip column in the Britain because our wedding was going to be expensive. For one, our planner insisted that the loveliest and most appropriate venue for a rising star in politics was Blenheim Palace, which was associated with Winston Churchill and also happened to be one of if not the most expensive venue in the UK.

            My dress was from Temperley Bridal, (which had just launched in 2006 because of course I had to choose an English designer to support), and quickly became the talk of the town, too. I was fifty percent sure the Master himself was behind the constant leaks of information to drum up more public excitement for our wedding as he rose through the ranks of British government.

            The guest list wasn’t too large but it was strategic, key political figures and rich people along with some random people the Master hypnotized into thinking they were related to us somehow. As a side note, being paraded around in public with my ‘brother’ and ‘future sister-in-law’ was freaky as hell, because they thought they knew me and I knew they didn’t and ugh it was just so strange. Luckily there were only a scant few times that the Master expected me to go to a restaurant or something with his thralls, so I was able to move past the guilt and discomfort. At least they were still alive, you know?

            Months passed like that. Archangel Network went up and the next thing on the Master’s list (besides attuning his telepathic Time Lord abilities to it) was to get it into every single phone he could force it into. And, of course, finish building the Valiant.

            The Master got weirder with the fob watch as time went on – and by that I mean weirder than he was already, keeping it in his pocket and constantly checking to make sure it was there and sometimes sitting there with his hands on it, listening for its whispers.

            A year flew by in the blink of an eye. Well no, sometimes it felt like it was crawling, but…

            Soon enough we were in March. Three months before the Doctor was due back. And the wedding (I didn’t want to call it ‘our’ wedding since, you know, it was a total farce) was nipping at our heels. By the time we reached the middle of the month, I was spending every day sick to my stomach in anticipation.

            Somehow, it didn’t seem real. That we were getting married, I mean. It was weird. What was weirder still was the morning of the ceremony, when I walked to the kitchen in my pajamas because I just didn’t care anymore and went to make some coffee and the Master decided to ominously scare the shit out of me as though I didn’t already have enough on my plate.

“I have a gift for you,” he announced as he strode into the kitchen, already dressed in a suit.

            I looked over at him in alarm, nearly spilling my coffee.

“What?” From the way he scanned my face, I gathered that I looked terrible given that I hardly slept from anxiety and not in the normal bride way.

“I have a gift for you,” he enunciated slowly, like I was being ridiculous. “A wedding gift. I’ll give it to you after the ceremony and we’ll open it together when we get back.”

            I stared at him blankly. ‘Open it together’ sounded ominous as fuck.

“Thank you…?” I ventured after a tense minute of eye contact. “I didn’t think we were exchanging gifts since the wedding is… well, you know.”

            He raised an eyebrow.

“Is what?” He asked, a mocking edge to the word.

            I had to fight the urge to sigh.

“It’s a stupid human ceremony that doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a piece of paper and a fancy party for your image.” Forgive me for being wary that your gift is a trap, I didn’t say. “I didn’t get you anything because I didn’t think there was anything you would want.”

            He threw back his head and laughed, grabbing onto my hands and pulling me around – almost like we were dancing – much to my alarm and confusion.

“It’s a gift to both of us,” he said after a few seconds of that, his face too close to mine, his eyes too bright with mania and a vicious kind of victory. “You’ll see.”

            For one wild second, I almost thought he was going to kiss me. He didn’t, but it was unsettling to say the least that the thought even crossed my mind. I knew I would have to kiss him at the ceremony later that day, but that would be a chaste kiss for the papers, not…

            Not whatever this could have been.

            Not that it was anything, I tried to convince myself even as I was being driven to Blenheim Palace (a drive that took almost an hour and a half from our apartment in St. John’s Wood. That was why I’d had to wake up at the crack of dawn, of course, but the Master wouldn’t let me stay in a bridal suite away from him just in case I tried to escape and I sure as fuck wasn’t staying in a one bed suite with him, so driving up the day of it was.

            When we got there, there were people waiting for us. Like, a several people. For me, hairdressers and makeup artists and such. I didn’t recognize the makeup artist that I had gone to before (and convinced not to give me a full 2006 beat). Had she been replaced?

            I was snapped out of my vain thought process by the Master pulling me in close to press a kiss to my cheek that made everyone ‘aww’ demonstratively.

“Be good,” he said – warned - and then we were both being taken away.

            It took me a minute to recover from the jolt of electricity I felt from his mouth brushing against my ear. Stockholm Syndrome, I reminded myself distantly as someone chattered on about a replacement makeup artist who had been well instructed on what my wants were for the day.

            I nodded absentmindedly and soon enough, I was in a bridal suite with attendants and my dress on display, ready for me to slip into it. First someone came to do my hair; there wasn’t too much to do with it, as it was just shoulder length now. It was twisted into a pretty updo and decorated with pins that featured tiny enamel flowers that I felt stood out nicely from the pale ginger – just shy of being called strawberry blonde – color of my hair.

            I studied myself in the mirror as I waited for the new makeup artist.

            I was pale. Not just in skin tone, but – my hair was pale, my lips were pale, if it weren’t for the freckles all over my face and body I would look like someone had washed out a photo of a redheaded person.

“There you are,” a bright, cheerful voice called. There was an edge to it, though, that wasn’t bright or cheerful. It was almost…

            My eyes met hers in the mirror.

“Missy?” I breathed, whipping around as quickly as I could, not sure if or what the hell was going on here.

“Hello, darling,” she purred, placing both of her hands daintily on my face and then – and then dragging me into a passionate kiss. And I mean passionate. There was tongue for fuck’s sake. For one wild second I remembered her kissing the Doctor when they first met-

“Oh my, it is rather strange that you know about that,” she commented when she pulled away, licking her lips. “Well, know about that now, anyway. You’re lucky my younger self didn’t want to connect to your mind until you were you again.”

            She wasn’t making sense.

“Naughty girl,” she admonished, clearly jumping from one train of thought to the next. “You led me on, didn’t you? All those months on the Valiant, working against me. Oh, but I wouldn’t have you any other way.”

            She kissed me again, just as, uh, passionately.

“Wait – what are you doing here?” I asked, taking several steps away after getting her hands off my face. She was doing Time Lord telepathy on me, I knew, and I couldn’t risk her knowing about everything to come. “Why are you visiting me?”

“I’m here to do your makeup, darling,” she said like it was obvious. “Can’t have you looking like a mid-2000s chav on your wedding night.”

            Alarm spiked through my system.

“You mean when I get married,” I corrected apprehensively as she sat me down and  pulled out a bag and… got to work doing my face.

            She smirked at me through the mirror as she shook up a bottle of what looked like futuristic foundation.

“No, I mean on your wedding night,” she tittered, a devious expression on her face. “It’s only been a hundred trillion years coming.”

            I opened my mouth to ask what she meant – because as unpredictable as Missy was, she seemed more likely to maybe answer a question than the version of the Master I was running around with – but she just grabbed my chin and started putting lipstick on my lips so that I couldn’t speak.

            I took the hint (maybe in part because of the warning in her eyes) and didn’t ask any more questions. She did my makeup with ease and I looked pretty damn good when she was done, if I did say so myself.

“Dress now, sweetling,” she cooed when she was done, and… I glanced between her and the dress unsurely. Was I supposed to change in front of her?

            She pouted.

“Nothing wrong with your lawfully wedded wife helping you into your wedding dress,” she complained, but then shrugged, taking a seat in the chair I’d just abandoned. “But go on then, if you’re shy. Change behind the screen and I’ll zip you up.”

            I did as told, my mind caught on ‘lawfully wedded wife.’ Missy seemed like such a distinct person from Saxon Master who I was about to marry that it felt like I had two different not actually my real spouses. Boy would that get confusing real fast. But – more importantly – why was Missy here? I was an accessory, a prop. I shouldn’t matter enough to her timeline to merit coming back. And Missy was at least a little bit Team Doctor by this point, judging by the look of her. So she surely wasn’t coming back to stop me from trying to help him… right?

“I can hear you thinking, darling,” she observed as I stepped out from behind the curtain trying to act like I wasn’t unnerved, holding my dress to my chest modestly. Her mouth curved into a saucy smile. “Gorgeous.”

            I tried not to gape unflatteringly at her but – what was up with all the compliments and the kissing and the come-ons?

“Why are you here?” I managed after a minute. “Aren’t I long since left for dead in the future you’re from?”

            She tutted in a way that was, um, effective, as she slipped behind me and slowly zipped up my dress, her hands skimming over my bare shoulders like a lover’s would.

“You just don’t listen to me, do you?” She chided, and for a second I was afraid she was going to grab my face again. “You’ll never be free of me, and that’s a promise.”

            I stared at her. She said it like she was trying to comfort me, but… in what fucking world was that supposed to be comforting?

“Right,” I said, just to say something, wondering if she was just saying that or if she meant for the rest of my probably short life, or… “Okay, then. So… why have you come back to this point in time, exactly? I’m guessing it wasn’t nostalgia for our wedding day.”

            If I said the last part rather sardonically, well, who could blame me?

“You know what a bootstrap paradox is?” She asked lightly, ignoring that. I nodded and she smirked. “Well, they always were your favorite. Anyway, I’m doing the Doctor a huge favor because I have turned a new leaf and am incredibly magnanimous, do try to remember that, darling – and because you’re a naughty, naughty girl who never could quite choose between us.”

            I gaped at her, face flushing blotchy, vivid red.

“I – I’m sorry?” I demanded, mortified even though I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about.

“No, you’re not,” Missy dismissed, looking like the cat that ate the canary. “And we wouldn’t have you any other way – believe me, if you ever think to choose him over me I’ll strangle you both. It’ll be intimate. And final. For him, anyway.”

            My mouth opened and closed like a fish.

“You’re cute even as a human,” Missy observed thoughtfully, and then gripped my head in both her hands. “Shame you won’t remember this – or me.”

            I tried to struggle loose but her Time Lord strength was too much for me. I made the mistake of looking into her eyes and then-

            The wedding went by in a blur.

            My fake brother walked me down the aisle and gave me away, at the altar the Master and I exchanged traditional vows, we had the handfasting as promised and – something in that made me actually tear up, the scarlet and orange cord drumming up a kind of nostalgia I didn’t know the source of, and then it was music and dancing.

            The Master stuck by my side all night, the fake family and friends made a few speeches but I was still in some kind of shock and didn’t really care for any of it, and… they played ‘Loch Lomond’ for the last song, just like I wanted.

            I sang along with the lyrics and cried like I was getting married for real, which I suppose I was, and then the Master and I were being cheered off by strangers as we got into the fancy car that would take us home. The Master signaled for the chauffer to give us privacy, which the man obliged to by closing the window between us and the driver’s side.

            And then it was just the Master and I – and him taking my hand in his and dropping his precious fob watch into it, carefully, so carefully, while watching me like a hawk for any sort of reaction.

“When we get back, we’ll open it,” he said to me quietly, more settled, more at peace than I had ever seen him. “Together.”

            I want to live, the watch murmured. I want to be free.

            Three months until the Doctor arrived, until the Valiant, until the Master died for good at the hands of – of someone (why couldn’t I remember?) and I was sitting in a car with the Master holding a real life Time Lord fob watch in my shaking grip with a single question burning in my mind.

“Koschei,” I asked, a little low and more than a little lost. “Why is my name Marya Oakden?”

            He laughed.

“Now you’re asking,” he commented, amused. “Have you ever heard the tale of Koschei the Deathless, Yana?”

            I stilled.

“Yes.” I loved fairy tales, but there was something about that one that had always reminded me of something. “My name is Marya because of Marya Morevna?”

            And… I paused in realization, staring at him. Oakden wasn’t a coincidence. It couldn’t be. Not when the Master was from the House of Oakdown of Gallifrey.

“In this version of the story, Koschei wins,” he said smugly. “No Ivan to take you away, Yana. The hero has already lost and he doesn’t even know it.”

            Koschei and Marya. Koschei and Yana. I remembered from my keen interest in names that Ivan… was basically a Slavic version of John. Koschei and Yana and – the Doctor?

“Koschei, did I know you… before we met at the end of the world?” I asked carefully, so carefully because it seemed like right now he would answer me and the only answer I could imagine him giving me was impossible.

            He closed my hand around the watch, his own fingers brushing over it almost obsessively.

“Asking the right questions at last,” he observed, and then surprised me by tugging at a strand of my ginger hair that had fallen out of place during the festivities. “You’ve known me since we were children. I’m the one who came back for you. The one who saved you. Remember that – remember which one of us came back.”

            He was rambling a bit, his voice getting more pitchy and manic as he went on, but I was stuck on ‘which one of us.’ It hadn’t occurred to me before today because, well, I’d been a normal human my whole life and my watch was a toy that had never spoken to me before, but…

            It was mine.

            There was a Time Lord consciousness in it, and it was mine. From the very beginning, it was mine. And it had wanted me to give it to the Master. To Koschei. The thought of being a Time Lord – Time Lady – was dizzying. How was it possible? I was from a different fucking dimension and I still didn’t know how I’d gotten here. Gotten back? Talk about wibbley wobbley timey wimey stuff. Even if I considered my dimension a parallel world, sort of like Pete’s World that according to the Doctor Time Lords used to be able to visit… how did I get back?

            How did I escape the Time War?

            The Doctor had looked at me like I was a monster and… if I was a surviving Time Lord, for all I knew I could be.

            Three months until the Doctor arrived. Three months until the Year That Never Was – and I would make sure it never was – aboard the Valiant. All I had to do was do my best to protect the people aboard the Valiant who would remember what happened – Martha Jones’ family, Jack, all the staff and of course the Doctor himself – and make sure no one shot the Master at the end of it all. I could do that.

            (When we opened that – my – watch, though… would I still want to?)